In 1880, three young Englishmen went off on a fishing and hunting trip in Eastern Jotunheimen. Memurubu was one of the camps they used. Two years later, they gave out a book of their experience, and it was published anonymously in London in 1882. They called it Three on Norway. By two of them.
The book has since been published in several editions in the original language, and the first Norwegian version came as soon as in 1884. It was translated by H.J. Muller, and included the original illustrations according to the author’s sketches. Later editions of the Norwegian version have been more freely translated and somewhat shortened by Per Thomsen.
“Tre i Norge” (Three on Norway) is an unusual travelogue. The reader is spared for elaborate descriptions of the landscape and travel routes. Instead, we are provided with a series of somewhat ironic depictions of the land and people, customs and eating habits.
They often write disrespectfully and exaggerate grotesquely, but with the purpose of helping the reader understand that it is an exaggeration. We are expressively warned about this in the introduction: “… if we have occasionally exaggerated ever so slightly here and there, it is because our friends in their quiet wisdom always tend to subtract about 33 percent whenever we give an account of our hunting and fishing adventures, such that we in the interest of the truth must add an equivalent amount in advance so that the end result will be correct”. (Source: Finn Skauge UIB.no)
The book is available for purchase in bookshops and web shops, and is well worth the read! At Memurubu, you can see with your own eyes where their camp was, and feel how the three adventurers themselves must have felt.
Experience the mountain
